Garden Planner, May 18

May 17, 2013

Written by

Stephanie Bruner

Special to the Register

This week

• Do you have to rake up your lawn clippings? Not necessarily. If you mow regularly, so that you’re only removing about one third of the length of each leaf blade, you can just let the clippings work their way down to the soil level. This doesn’t cause thatch — the clippings break down quickly, and they actually do return some nutrients to the soil. But if you’re like most of us, sometimes you go a little too long between mowing. If that’s the case, and you’re left with large clumps of clippings, rake them up before they cause dead spots. You can throw them into your compost pile or use them directly on the soil in your vegetable garden as long as you haven’t treated the lawn with herbicides for three mowing cycles.

• Speaking lawn, are you tired of trying to get grass to grow under trees? Consider planting a ground cover, like perennial vinca (Vinca minor), deadnettle (Lamium spp.), Canadian wild ginger (Asarum canadense) or barrenwort (Epimedium spp.) These all thrive in conditions where grass doesn’t grow well.

• Start pinching mums, asters and upright sedums (like “Autumn Joy”) to keep them compact and bushy. Just above a set of leaves, pinch off an inch or two every couple of weeks from now until around the first of July.

This month

• Soaker hoses are an efficient, economical way to water a perennial or shrub border, because it delivers water to the base of the plant, instead of spraying it up into the air. You lose less water to evaporation than you do with a sprinkler, and plant foliage stays healthier, too. You can cover the hose lightly with mulch if you don’t want to look at it. You can hook a couple of soaker hoses together, but be sure to check that there’s enough water pressure to reach the plants at the end of the hose.

Stephanie Bruner is a freelance writer in Des Moines with a degree in horticulture